Friday, November 20, 2015

And speaking of Disney Birthdays, it is doubtful that it has slipped past you that this year Disney’s first theme park, Disneyland in California, has been celebrating its 60th birthday, a.k.a. its Diamond Celebration.

Being the Disneyphile, I composed these two wallpaper images from big splash banners from the Disney Parks site. The first night-time shot showed up at least by July, when it was the official birth day of the 17th. The second replaced the first by August. I presume that it is a shot taken at dawn, given the lack of people in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle that would otherwise be crowding around it at any given dusk in the 7-day a week run park.

I was quite pleased how I managed to effectively erase superimposed text and things necessary for the site.

The time spent photo cleaning and further by putting them up as computer screen wallpapers, however, I had gotten to stare at them for significant amounts of time, and in doing so picked up on some weird photo editing on them.

In this image, the four lamp post banners with the Disneyland “D” at the top are the same re-sized and fit over what is possibly the original silhouettes of the banners in the original photo. With the two closest of the banners you can see, or rather not see, the drapery on the far turrets don’t show between the banners and lamp posts.

In this image, there are clearly six lamp post banner on the bridge and not just the 4 pasted into the previous image. Also the details of the castle walls including drapery can be seen through the bridge post banners.

However the thing that bugs me is the obelisk/post on the right with it’s strange dark halo against the castle walls. Because of this, that post looks a little too dark and a little too in focus when compared to it neighboring walls. One can only imagine what about that post necessitated a copy and paste upgrade.

Noticing the right-most tower roof, the fluttering flag atop the spire suggests that this is a long exposure picture for low lighting conditions.

A statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin has been transformed into a monument to “Star Wars” icon Darth Vader by sculptor Alexander Milov.

VOLODYMYR SHUVAYEV VIA GETTY IMAGES

A recent law banning communist symbols led to the makeover. The monument was fitted with the “Star Wars” villain’s helmet and Lenin’s coattails were converted into Th dark lord’s cape. However, the original bronze sculpting remains intact on the inside so that descendants may exhume him if needed.

Friday, August 21, 2015

In the British seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, a place that’s been described as the most “depressing dump” you could ever spend a night in, the world-famous street artist Banksy has taken up his latest residency behind the walls of an abandoned seafront leisure club he used to visit as a child, formerly known as “The Tropicana”, a 10,200-spare foot concrete wasteland since it closed down in 2000.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Edited together by well-informed YouTuber Space Peguin, 150 Hidden Pixar Easter Eggs video enumerates Pixar’s penchant for pop culture references (a carpet Toy Story is a homage to The Shining), crossover appearances (Linguini from Ratatouille has The Incredibles logo on his underwear), and hints towards future projects, far-less pronounced than Marvel post-credits sequences (A bug from A Bug’s Life can be briefly seen in a storybook a character is reading in Toy Story.).

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

By pleating and pressing tulle - the same type of fabric used in a ballerina’s dress - Benjamin Shine plays with the fabric’s intrinsic translucent and opaque qualities as it is layered ever thicker. As if this wasn’t challenging enough, he goes one step further by using only one uncut piece of fabric for an entire portrait.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Supernatural’s, Dean Winchester, struggles with the effects of bearing the Mark of Cain. Until Sam and Castiel find a cure, Dean has no other choice but to just “Shake It Off!” The Hillywood Show® brings the SPN Family a parody of epic proportions, that includes, Angels, Demons, Crowley, the Chevy Impala and fan favorite moments from the CW’s Supernatural!

Starring, Osric Chau as “Sam”, Rob Benedict as “Cain” and special guest cameos from the Cast of Supernatural, including Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins and more!

Monday, April 27, 2015

Music Video by Kindie Childrens Music Artist Kristen Cook, featuring animation by Dean Velez and the students at The Anvel.
It was written and performed by Kristen Cook (www.kristencook.com), with additional lyrics by Jesse Friedberg.

The song was produced and engineered by Michael Seifert at Ante Up in Cleveland, OH. www.michaelseifert.com

Support Independent Kids Music! Buy 5 Fresh, Fun and New Kindie Music Tracks by Kristen Cook, including Fruit Fight, for under $5 here: http://apple.co/1bJDK8a

Sunday, April 26, 2015

What would Man of Steel look like with more natural color? That’s what the gang over at VideoLab wanted to see. So, they took clips from the film, played with the color balances and saturation and came up with some pretty interesting results.

Posted by VideoLab on YouTube April 21st, 2015

There is currently not a lot of information about the Folk(s) of VideoLab. Maybe this is a one-off experiment by a film student? Maybe there’s more coming?

The point, in any case of course, is how different a film can be by how it looks.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Join emoji-fied versions of Anna, Elsa, Olaf, and the rest of out favorite Frozen friends as they retell the story of Disney’s Frozen with performances of “Let It Go” and “Do You Want to Build a Snowman.”

Monday, March 30, 2015

Last year, 2014, I went and saw 26 movies. This time around I included 3 movies viewed on Netflix movie steaming service, and by this I mean that I sat down and really watched them unlike like other Netflix content where I let it play while I do something like art up something at 3:00 in the morning. “Art up” is a proper verb isn’t it?

For a break down of my grading process, you may refer to my 2013 roundup.

Averaging about a movie once every other week seems like a lot. However, about half way in the year I decided to avoid my local AMC Theartres’ $2.00 surcharge on films with showing times after 4:00 p.m. when paid with a gift certificate/ voucher. So I wasn't hitting them after work as I had been doing and instead I attended a Pacific Theater, which was a little less convenient. Other wise, I figure that I would have seen at least a half dozen more movies last year.

The abundant up-graded reviews (in white) shouldn’t be surprising, since by now I pretty much know what kind of films I like/ will pay to see. Which makes the three down-graded films (in black) particularly disappointing. On the other hand, I see ever fewer surprises in films with each year, and struggle to not down-grade something because I guessed the twist ending and rather more justly grade the quality of how well the twist ending was handled.

I graded both The Lego Movie and Big Hero 6 an “A,” and probably enjoyed The Lego Movie a bit more.

I down-graded Maleficent by three levels. Besides not understanding why the characters were depicted as they were (Maleficent, the misunderstood hero), I could not imagine the creative reason why it needed to be made.

You may note that I gave most of these a starting grade of “B.” In other words I’m saying this: “Congratulations, guys, you’ve went and made the film you wanted.”

To select one film of this batch as my “If you missed it, you should check it out” recommendation it would be Edge of Tomorrow a.k.a. Live, Die, Repeat, even though I bumped it up only one level. I think it earns that position just by being a decent film that was so difficult to market or in a concise way describe the film as something a lot of people would be interested in seeing. Interstellar, by contrast, as marketed was “Christopher Nolan’s weird space and time travel movie,” and audiences understood that. Certainly, in Edge, Tom Cruise brings his “Tom Cruise” brand of actioning, but it’s like the director uses that bit of familiarity as a set-up for a surprising pay-off.

Note: Bryan is employed by Disney Consumer Products, sister company to Walt Disney Pictures who produced this film. Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by The Walt Disney Company or any of its divisions. This blog is not associated with the Walt Disney Company or its divisions.

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THAT’S GOOD SPAM is a web-log authored by Bryan Mon. All opinions expressed are either his or can be attributed as noted. Opinions contain herein are shared by neither the author’s employer nor its parent corporation.